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From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

How can the
Islamic world sustain its silence about what amounts to one
of the most concerted assaults on the faith in recent history.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A disagreement between
major Indonesian religious leaders and the government on how to respond
to China’s crackdown on Turkic Muslims raises questions about the
Islamic world’s ability to sustain its silence about what amounts to one
of the most concerted assaults on the faith in recent history.

The disagreement could take on greater
significance after the elections in April, which incumbent president
Joko Widodo is expected to win. Widodo’s vice-presidential running mate,
Ma’ruf Amin, is the Ulema Council’s chairman. Since joining the ticket,
Amin has retained his Council position as non-active chairman.

“Given the relationship of Pakistan with China,
and in the Muslim world in particular, the Chinese narrative is
apparently being accepted across the board as the one that is
correct,” Hussain told Associated Press.

With the exception of a few protests in Bangladesh
and India and critical statements by Malaysian leaders, Muslims across
the globe have largely refrained from pressuring their governments to
speak out about developments in Xinjiang. In fact, China retains its
status as Asia’s top tourism destination for Muslim travelers.

Nabeel Shariff, founder of UK-based halal holiday
company Serendipity Tailormade, struggled with the ethical aspects of
promoting Muslim tourism to China, but concluded that “In a way, it
makes sure the Uyghur community are not forgotten.”

Shariff’s justification notwithstanding, there is
little evidence that the plight of China’s Turkic Muslims remains in the
Muslim public eye. Muslim and Chinese leaders appear to be betting that
the silence is sustainable. That threatens to be a risky strategy.

For one thing, the crackdown in Xinjiang is
expanding to the Hui, China’s non-Turkic Muslims. The autonomous region
of Ningxia Hui recently signed a cooperation agreement on anti-terrorism
with Xinjiang in a bid to learn from the crackdown on the Turkic
Muslims, or, in the words of the Global Times, a Communist Party organ, “to learn from Xinjiang’s experiences in promoting social stability.”

Mounting Western criticism of the crackdown, which is toughest on Muslims but also targets other religious groups, including evangelists,
puts Muslim nations on the spot. The criticism is likely to lead to
Western companies boycotting products made in Xinjiang by inmates of the
re-education camps, which China describes as institutions for
vocational training.

A potential black swan is anti-Chinese sentiment
in a number of Muslim countries, some of which have ethnic links to
China’s Turkic Muslims. This could be a result of perceptions that
Chinese commercial terms for project finance and loans associated with
the People’s Republic’s infrastructure-driven Belt and Road Initiative
are debt traps.

In an illustration of the risk, Kunaysh Sultanov, a
member of the Kazakh parliament and former deputy prime minister and
ambassador to China, took issue with the government’s attempt to balance
its relations with China with its need to stand up for the rights of
Kazakhs.

“There should be talks taking place with the Chinese delegates. Every delegation that goes there should be bringing this topic up…
The key issue is that of the human rights of ethnic Kazakhs in any
country of the world being respected,” Sultanov said after an escaped
Chinese camp worker of Kazakh descent testified in court about what she
had witnessed.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

Dr. James M. Dorsey, a non-resident Senior Associate at the BESA Center, is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture.Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/china-xinjiang-crackdown/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter